Hearing devices such as hearing aids (also referred to as hearing prostheses or hearing instruments) for hard of hearing people or hearing enhancement devices for augmenting the hearing capability of normal hearing persons, as well as hearing protection devices designed to prevent noise-induced hearing loss, commonly comprise an input transducer, e.g. a microphone, for picking up sound from the surroundings, a signal processing unit for processing the signal from the input transducer, and an output transducer, e.g. a miniature loudspeaker also called a receiver, for converting the processed signal into a signal perceivable by the user of the hearing device. Typically, such hearing devices are adapted to be worn at the ear (e.g. a behind-the-ear, BTE hearing device) or within the ear canal (e.g. an in-the-ear, ITE or completely-in-canal, CIC hearing device), or alternatively to be partly anchored in the scull (e.g. a bone-anchored hearing aid, BAHA) or partly implanted in the middle or inner ear (e.g. a direct acoustic cochlear stimulation, DACS, or cochlear implant). Furthermore, such hearing devices commonly incorporate a number of different functionalities or features, each one potentially providing a specific benefit to the user in order to improve the user's hearing experience to various degrees. Usually, some basic features are provided in all hearing devices, whereas advanced features, for instance employing more sophisticated audio signal processing such as adaptive beamforming and binaural signal processing, or providing more complex functionalities such as wireless audio streaming, are only offered by high-end hearing devices, which are therefore more expensive.
A hearing device professional, such as an audiologist or hearing aid acoustician, often referred to a hearing device “fitter”, is challenged with selecting a suitable hearing device model along with appropriate features depending on the needs and preferences of an individual user. It is difficult to determine which features will be useful to a certain user, i.e. will provide an individual benefit to this user in terms of improving the user's hearing capability or hearing experience. Because the user has to pay for additional hearing device features, such as extra hearing programs, or may even have to buy a more advanced and therefore more expensive hearing device, users will often decide to do without features which they think will provide little or no benefit to them. It is therefore usually difficult for both a hearing device professional as well as for a hearing device user to make a sound decision regarding which hearing device features are useful for the user. Hence, there is a need for means that allow a hearing device professional and/or a hearing device user to determine whether a certain hearing device feature will likely be useful to the user, i.e. will provide an individual benefit to this user in terms of improving the user's hearing capability or hearing experience.